Schoenberg's Sheen

Started by karlhenning, April 12, 2007, 07:35:28 AM

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Karl Henning

#360
Quote from: Christo on October 04, 2013, 05:57:17 AM
The honest answer - I think I owe you one - is, that I simply don't know how to rank Schönberg from the mid-1920s on. The composer of the Gurre Lieder is, no doubt, and even for me  ;) , one of the greatest ever. I have no clue, however, how posterity will judge the system he 'imposed' on part of the art music of the 20th Century. And I'm definitely not qualified to make a try myself.  :)

I think it's not entirely fair to speak of his invention as an imposition. I don't remember ever hearing, for instance, that he was negatively critical of Berg's (arguably) "impure" application of the method in the Violin Concerto.  I think you're reacting to (e.g.) Boulez's militaristic tack; and to (let's face it) a raft-load of mediocre applications of the method.

That said, we don't judge Schoenberg as an artist by the method, but by the music.  I respect your recusing yourself from the question!  So trust the judgement of (e.g.) James Levine, who in two seasons with the BSO made the case that Schoenberg is a pillar of music of a stature to counterpose with Beethoven.  Nor I nor Levine judge his music in distinct categories of the still more-or-less-tonal High Romantic stuff and applications of the twelve-tone method, but as a body, in toto.  And its greatness does not suffer serious challenge.

Edit :: typo
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Christo

Quote from: karlhenning on October 04, 2013, 06:13:02 AM
I think you're reacting to (e.g.) Boulez's militaristic tack; and to (let's face it) a raft-load of mediocre applications of the method.

That's a fair comment, and yes, I do admire composers who followed the lead of the master, especially Skalkottas, Gerhard and perhaps Lutosławski, too. For historical reasons (once I was young and foolish; I still am, but only the latter) I never really tried with Schönberg himself. (Please forgive me teacher, but I never had any music lessons in all of my life, only played music because I like it).  ???
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

Karl Henning

Quote from: sanantonio on October 04, 2013, 08:01:56 AM
Do you think there are more or less mediocre applications of the 12-tone method a/o/t writing in a tonal style?  Speaking quantitatively,, I think mediocrity reigns in all endeavors.

Agreed, and an important corollary.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

John Copeland

Quote from: Cato on February 14, 2013, 12:54:38 PM
Thanks to Karl Henning:
Quote from Arnold Schoenberg:
"I consider it important to admit that I was Saul before I became Paul."

I am on my way to Damascus guys, don't worry...  :D

Karl Henning

Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Cato

Quote from: karlhenning on December 30, 2013, 01:45:12 PM
Interesting article about the Op.47 Phantasie.

Marvelous phrase in that article: "...Schoenberg's mastery of the ambiguity of form..."

I have always thought the Phantasie was a rather accessible work, the one to play to skeptics or those downright hostile to Schoenberg's works after the Second String Quartet.

"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

Karl Henning

Strange to say, it's a long while since I've actually listened to it . . . I remember studying it in a seminar in Buffalo, so the Idea of the piece has been with me forever.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning


(from Malcom MacDonald's Schoenberg, in the Master Musicians series:)

[Eric Schmid writes:]

It seldom happened that he played anything from his own works. When he did, he always stressed how his own style had developed from existing tradition.  I remember our looking at his first Chamber Symphony . . . Another time, we examined the Wind Quintet Op.26 Schoenberg used this complicated work to show how he integrated classical formal principles in his own style. . . . It is very interesting that he never spoke about twelve-tone technique . . .

On the other hand, he did not stop pupils using it — or any other idiom — so long as the results were musical [...] Eric Schmid once brought to class a twelve-note string quartet he was writing:

[Eric Schmid writes:]

[Schoenberg] immediately got inside the work and showed us how thematic development should really proceed.  There was a certain rigidity in the piece that he thereby immediately dispelled . . . There was a particular thematic development that he did not like.  He made a suggestion that meant using a different sequence of notes. I mentioned shyly that my composition was written using the twelve-tone system . . .

Schoenberg's rejoinder was: 'Well, then you'll have to change the row, won't you!'
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Mirror Image

Time to pull a James :) -

BEGLEITMUSIK ZU EINER LICHTSPIELSZENE (1930)

By Joseph H. Auner, State University of New York at Stonybrook

Film music for a nonexistent film. Schoenberg's Accompaniment to a Film Scene, Op. 34, was conceived independently of any specific film or scenario, beyond the sparse programmatic outline, "threatening danger, fear, catastrophe," indicated in the subtitle. The absence of a film has posed a problem since its completion in 1930. A Dresden critic wrote of one of the first performances, "I kept asking myself for several painful minutes, what sort of film, in heaven's name, is supposed to go with this abstract music?" Even Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg commented circumspectly on the lack of a film, "of course it is a complete work or art, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it could be heard synchronically (or whatever it is called) with a film created by you?"—a suggestion Berg may have recalled when he included a film sequence in his own opera, Lulu, left unfinished at his death in 1935. In recent decades several attempts have been made to provide the missing film, employing either silent films of the twenties or creating new productions specifically to accompany the music.

Yet it is precisely this independence from any one film, the invitation to see what can only be imagined, the substitution of a communal spectacle with a private, internal drama, and the creation of functional music that eludes its function, that are most characteristic of Schoenberg's complex and confrontational relationship to artistic and cultural developments in Weimar Germany. When he wrote the piece during the fall and winter months of 1929-1930 Schoenberg was a professor of composition at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin, a prestigious position which he held from 1926 to his departure from Europe in 1933. In contrast to the common view of Schoenberg as standing aloof from the contemporary scene, his works from these years illustrate his engagement with the social and technological changes that were bringing about a new mass culture, as well as his insistence on approaching these developments on his own terms.

The work was premiered under Otto Klemperer on November 6, 1930 in a symphony concert at the Kroll Opera in Berlin (preceded a few months earlier by a radio broadcast with the Frankfurt Symphony under the direction of Hans Rosbaud). Though not without protests, the work was generally well received in these and other performances, a fact that caused Schoenberg some concern, as he wrote to his pupil Heinrich Jalowetz who had conducted it in 1931: "What you told me about the performance pleases me very much. ... People do seem to like the piece: ought I to draw any conclusions from that as to its quality? I mean: the public apparently likes it."

Schoenberg's irony here reflects a funDamental conflict he felt between the Weimar ideal of art serving the public and his sense of the moral and spiritual mission of the artist-a tension that is dramatized in his opera Moses und Aron which occupied him precisely at this time. This conflict is evident in every aspect of the Accompaniment to a Film Scene. On a practical level, the attractions of the marketplace must have played a role in his accepting the commission to contribute to a special series for the Heinrichshofen publishing house, which specialized in scores for the thriving German silent film industry. Yet while the relatively small orchestra, expanded percussion section, and stripped-down textures reflect the practices of silent film scoring, the work's complexity, and dissonant, twelve-tone language would have prohibited its performance in a theater.

This should not be thought a miscalculation, but rather, as some critics of the time noted, as a challenge to the new medium. Schoenberg had seen in moving pictures a danger for opera and theater, and he protested against the vulgarity of the majority of films. But, as with many of his contemporaries, he also had high hopes for the possibilities film offered. In 1927, the year of the first full length talking film, The Jazz Singer, he envisioned film "as a completely new and independent instrument for innovative artistic expression." Rejecting "marketability of wide mass appeal" as the sole factor determining production, and concentrating on "true and deep ideas and emotions," Schoenberg believed film in Germany could rise to the level of its poetry and music.

Schoenberg's particular interest in film can be linked to his strong visual imagination and the important role that movement, light, and color played in many of his works. The most obvious evidence of this was his talent as a painter, but even his instrumental works often have a visual component, in particular programmatic pieces like the "Colors" movement of his Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16, or the vivid imagery of the winter night in the Richard Dehmel poem that is represented programmatically in Transfigured Night, Op. 4. The most striking work in this regard is the opera Die glueckliche Hand (an untranslatable title, meaning literally "The Lucky Hand.") In a 1928 lecture, Schoenberg explained the opera's elaborate colored lighting and complex staging in terms of his vision of a new form of theater that he called "making music with the media of the stage." As he was finishing the score in 1913 Schoenberg wrote to his publisher about the possibility of a film realization, with scenes to be designed by Kokoschka, Kandinsky, or Alfred Roller. He wrote that he was interested in film not only because it offered technical solutions to the problems of staging, but because of its potential to create "the utmost unreality ... the opposite of what the cinema generally aspires to."

The whole thing should have the effect (not of a dream) but of chords. Of music. It must never suggest symbols, or meaning, or thoughts, but simply the play of colors and forms. Just as music never drags a meaning around with it... so too this should simply be like sounds for the eye, and so far as I am concerned everyone is free to think or feel something similar to what he thinks or feels while hearing music.

If this imagined film was to be "sounds for the eye," the Accompaniment to a Film Scene might be thought of "sights for the ear," with the absent film as the best guarantee of "the utmost unreality."

The eight-minute long film music is in three continuous sections following the programmatic subtitle, "threatening danger, fear, catastrophe," (though significantly, the precise locations are not indicated in the score, and commentators disagree on where the third part begins.) Strings tremolo softly to begin the opening section. Fragmentary motives in the wind instruments coalesce into a regularly shaped melody in the oboe against a nervous string accompaniment. This theme is the first linear statement of the twelve tone row, which in various transformations makes up all the melodies and harmonies of the piece. A series of increasingly distorted variations on this melody make up the remainDer of the two minute long first section, with the idea of "threatening danger" suggested by the melody's struggles to maintain its identity as the orchestra builds to a climax.

Beginning the approximately three minute second part, "Fear," the melody dissolves entirely into complex repetitive figures moving at a much faster tempo. These figures gradually splinter into sharp gestures that surge through the orchestra, interrupted by powerful brass chords. As if to recapture the comparative calm of the first part, a variant of the opening melody reemerges in a strange dance-like passage, creating something of the effect of "whistling in the dark." But this suggestion of stability dissolves, as the prominent piano part leads a massive crescendo to the shattering climax of the work.

The moment of "catastrophe" slowly subsides into the desolate third section as a variant of the melody asserts itself in the low strings against a solemn wind chorale. The mood of resignation in this most stylistically retrospective part of the piece is underscored by this melody's resemblance to the "Muss es sein?" ["Must it be?"] theme of the last movement of Beethoven's final string quartet, Op. 135. As the melody unfolds, the motive is presented in various transformations, mirroring what occurs in the Beethoven work. (Notably, Schoenberg discussed Op. 135 as a prototypical twelve-tone piece in his 1941 essay on "Composition with Twelve Tones.") But whereas the Beethoven answers the question "Muss es sein?" with joyful affirmation, the Accompaniment to a Film Scene presents no such positive solution. Instead the work concludes with a distorted recollection of the opening measures, eerie timbral effects intensifying the mood of profound disquiet.

[Article taken from the American Symphony Orchestra website)

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There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of performances of Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, but I really enjoyed Boulez's and Rattle's performances with maybe the Rattle edging out Boulez since he's got the Berliners. What do my fellow Schoenbergians think of this work?

snyprrr

...zzzZZZzzz... zzzZZZZzzzz... zzzzZZZZZzzz...

oh, what?, did you post something long and wordy?

Mirror Image

Quote from: snyprrr on March 23, 2014, 05:10:50 PM
...zzzZZZzzz... zzzZZZZzzzz... zzzzZZZZZzzz...

oh, what?, did you post something long and wordy?

:)

Are you a fan of Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, snyprrr?

Karl Henning

Nice article, thanks for posting.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Mirror Image


Archaic Torso of Apollo

Quote from: Mirror Image on March 23, 2014, 11:41:47 AM
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of performances of Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, but I really enjoyed Boulez's and Rattle's performances with maybe the Rattle edging out Boulez since he's got the Berliners. What do my fellow Schoenbergians think of this work?

I like it. I think it would be cool to program it as part of a concert devoted to film music, with the other pieces being from "real" films. The imaginary scenario would, I think, make it more palatable to audiences than his other serial works.
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

Mirror Image

Quote from: Velimir on March 23, 2014, 08:03:19 PM
I like it. I think it would be cool to program it as part of a concert devoted to film music, with the other pieces being from "real" films. The imaginary scenario would, I think, make it more palatable to audiences than his other serial works.

This would be very cool. I could see this work of Schoenberg's being performed while a projectionist runs some kind of bizarre black-and-white cartoon on a screen over top of the orchestra. 8)

EigenUser

An interesting video that I came across: Gershwin filming Schoenberg by Gershwin's tennis court. They played tennis together (too bad that this isn't in the video)!
http://www.youtube.com/v/8Cn1L_cgHPY
Beethoven's Op. 133 -- A fugue so bad that even Beethoven himself called it "Grosse".

Ken B

Quote from: EigenUser on April 08, 2014, 05:48:55 PM
An interesting video that I came across: Gershwin filming Schoenberg by Gershwin's tennis court. They played tennis together (too bad that this isn't in the video)!
http://www.youtube.com/v/8Cn1L_cgHPY
You don't like songs you say Nate. Not even Gershwin's?

EigenUser

Okay, I love the first chamber symphony. Absolutely love it. What's the second one like? How does it compare?

I know that I could easily go and listen on YouTube, but for some reason I'm curious to hear someone's opinion first. I guess I'm afraid that I'll be let down.
Beethoven's Op. 133 -- A fugue so bad that even Beethoven himself called it "Grosse".

Karl Henning

I like it about as well, but it is something a bit different.  The second movement of the Op.38 is quite a phlegmatic affair, compared to the barnstorming Op.9.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Ken B

Quote from: EigenUser on May 17, 2014, 10:47:59 AM
Okay, I love the first chamber symphony. Absolutely love it. What's the second one like? How does it compare?

I know that I could easily go and listen on YouTube, but for some reason I'm curious to hear someone's opinion first. I guess I'm afraid that I'll be let down.
You might like Adams's CS.
Fwiw I like AS 1 more than AS 2.